


Demon on a Lead

by AshVee



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Gen, Shameless Self Pleasing Piece, The Author Regrets Nothing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-02
Updated: 2016-08-02
Packaged: 2018-07-28 20:10:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 20,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7655020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AshVee/pseuds/AshVee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In space, punishment for any crime hadn't been death, not really. It had been exile, because exile meant death without someone putting knife to flesh. On the ground, things are more real. They are gritty. The one hundred have learned that, none more than Clarke Griffin, as she stands with a bloody hand and one girl's screams echoing in her ears. 2x08</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

In the first five seconds, Clarke felt the blood hot on her hands.

In the first five seconds, Raven felt the blood leave her heart.

-ReincarnatedPoet: Demon on a Lead-

Clarke felt the blade keenly in her hand. She felt the warm blood becoming thick and cool between her fingers. She stood there, amongst the grounders as they moved around her. Lexa had quelled the anger and violence that might have bubbled up and quickly turned deadly.

She was a good leader, just as Anya had been. Intelligent. Keen eyed. Willing to listen. Willing to...

She'd done what she'd had to do. Finn's voice was still hanging in her ear, thanking her. Turning her blood cold and her stomach contents to curdled milk. He should have hated her. He should have raged against her. In his final moments, he should have done anything but love her.

His lips had been warm against hers, and even in the chill of the night, they still burned her skin. The words burned her more.

What have we become?

The blood was cooling even as the grounders slowly extinguished their torches, even as they started to leave. Finn's body was taken from the pole and laid in the grass at her feet. The grounders were a harsh people, a cruel people, but they were not heartless. They left the body for burial.

They held up their end of the bargain, and with Finn's heart still in his chest, Lexa alone stood beside Clarke, her sharp eyes catching everything between the three of them and the fence. Everything that Clarke's eyes couldn't see. Tears. Memories. Ghosts. They all flooded her eyes and her heart and her mind until she could see nothing else.

Atom.

Charlotte.

Wells.

Anya.

Finn.

How many more people had to die in front of her? How many more at her hand or by her will?

"This will stay with you for the rest of your life," Lexa said. Clarke heard her, but she couldn't swallow around the lump in her throat to answer. The grounder commander did not expect a response, as she continued quickly. "You have my respect, Clarke of the Sky People." Lexa was gone in that next moment, disappearing into the shadow cast by the last lonely bonfire they'd left lit.

The blood was cold now, sticky and thick between her fingers. She felt a vague fuzziness to her head, but she couldn't place it, not as Finn's body was cooling and turning grey at her feet. Raven was still sobbing. Clarke didn't know where she was anymore, but she could hear it.

The destroyed sobbing of a young woman who lost the only thing she had left in the world. Clarke didn't know that grief. She didn't know the pain that came with the destruction of the last tie she had left to the world. She'd thought she had, when she watched that drop ship explode against the earth. She was wrong, though. Her mother had lived, and so that emptiness she'd felt couldn't compare to the pain Raven was feeling.

Clarke wouldn't be able to look at her again.

She blinked, forcing tears from her eyes. Tears were for those that were mourning. Tears were for those that deserved to feel grief. She choked on the tight sensation in her throat, forcing down the rising tide of self pity.

She'd done what she'd needed.

She'd done what she'd hoped someone would do for her.

She'd done. . .

What had she become?

"Clarke!" She startled, dropping the bloody shiv to the ground at her feet, taking two short stutter steps backward, away from the voice. She could just make out the shadowed face of Marcus Kane as he came across the field toward her. He had two guards flanking him, and vaguely, Clarke recognized that her mother wasn't there.

She'd be needed, no doubt, to console Raven, to treat the shock and the depression. Something in the back of her mind, in the dark shadowy place where she'd gone when she'd killed Atom, when she'd killed that grounder, whispered to her. It told her that she'd never be able to look at her mother either.

Could her mother not look at her?

"Clarke, are you alright?" Kane was closer this time, a mere twenty feet away from her, but it might as well have been the distance between the Earth and the remnants of the Arc Station in the sky. Because in that distance lay the body of Finn Collins. Finn Collins who was a good man, who was better than all of them, who had only let himself fall from his pedestal to pull her from the fire.

"I'll surrender quietly," she said, the words as empty as her chest felt. "You can hold a trial, make an example. It'll set a good precedent. We don't kill our own."

"What are you talking about?"

"Just don't hang me," she heard herself saying. She didn't even know she had an aversion to hanging. Not really, but as she stood there, thinking on the many ways Finn would have died, she realized that hanging would be the only way that might break her before it killed her.

"We aren't going to hang you, Clarke," Kane said. When she looked at him again-because at some point, she'd stopped looking at him and had been looking at Finn-he had both hands out in front of him as if he was trying to show he wasn't armed. He had a grim frown on his face, one that she'd never seen on the Arc, one that weighed as much as Bellamy's.

God, Bellamy.

Hadn't he wanted to put Jasper out of his misery when they'd first landed?

Hadn't he been willing to float Murphy for killing one of their own?

Hadn't he been willing to take Finn and run as far as they could get to save his life?

Hadn't he grown so much since then that she wouldn't recognize him if she didn't see him?

She felt something bubbling in her throat, and for a moment, she thought she might vomit. What came out was a hysterical laughter that hung in the stillness of the night air, floated across the field and into Camp Jaha.

She couldn't control it. She knew Raven would hear it. She knew her mother would hear it. She knew Bellamy would hear it.

Bellamy Blake who had come so far and used the hardships on the Earth to become a better man than he had been. She'd taken those same hardships and let them turn her into something dark and murderous.

The laughter cut off sharply as she sobbed and bit hard into her bottom lip. Kane took a few steps toward her, but he stopped just as quickly as he'd started. Finn was only ten paces away from him now. His dark eyes were fixed on the dead boy, his face creased with guilt. He didn't deserve that guilt. He shouldn't have to carry it, not when it was-

Clarke took a half step backward, turning slightly to look into the darkness behind her.

"Clarke, come on. We need to get back. Your mother is taking care of Raven, but she's-"

Clarke wasn't sure what lit her feet and sent her racing backward and into the shadow of the forest. Her name was shouted once before the world was only her breathing and the sound of moving brush beneath her feet.

She ran for days.

She ran for moments.

She ran for guilt.

She ran for everything.

In the end, she ran until she was asleep, laying on a familiar bed beneath the ground, wrapped up in blankets that still smelled like Finn if she could make herself breathe deeply enough.

-ReincarnatedPoet: Demon on a Lead-

The first day Clarke slept.

The first day Raven slept.

The second day Clarke stared at the wall of the bunker, wrapped up in blankets but still shivering.

The second day Raven stared at the wall of the infirmary, wrapped up in blankets but still shivering.

The third day Clarke screamed. The third day was not something that would ever make her proud. It meant weakness.

The third day Raven screamed. The third day was something that would forever make her proud. It meant strength.

The fourth day the ghosts and memories blinded Clarke's eyes again.

The fourth day the ghosts and memories blinded Raven's eyes for the first time.

The fifth day, Clarke made herself rise from the bunker, scrape together a meal from the forest and wash herself in the stream.

The fifth day, Bellamy Blake helped Raven Reyes from the infirmary, firm sets to their mouths and both braced by something that was outside of their bodies. Raven needed the knee immobilizer. Bellamy needed her damaged spine.

-ReincarnatedPoet: Demon on a Lead-

Bellamy scrubbed the heels of his hands over tired eyes. He'd been awake for eight days. Eight long days that he couldn't even remember anymore. His eyes flickered over to Raven, who sat beside him on a bench, methodically eating.

"You alright?" he asked. He'd gotten used to asking her if she was alright. Most of the time, she'd look at him with her head dropped forward, just seeing him through her eyelashes. It was a look that challenged. A look that he'd seen time and time again since she'd come to the earth.

A few times though, a few times over the last eight days, she'd simply shut her eyes and let him hold a hand against the small of her back, lending her whatever strength he had left.

He wasn't sure there was much left anymore, and so he was grateful when she glared at him over her spoon.

"Finn was my best friend," she said, voice clipped. "I loved him. I wish-" her voice broke "I wish I could have done something. I wish that it could have been me, but that wasn't Finn Collins. He wasn't...he wasn't someone that wanted you to mourn him." She stopped staring at the metal spoon and looked at him.

"You alright?" It was the first time she'd asked him, and he spat out the scripted response that he'd practiced for years.

"Yes," he said.

"You want to try that again without looking like you're about to fall into the table?" He had to smile at that as he straightened. When Marcus Kane had come back through the gate with Finn's body carried by two guards, Bellamy hadn't really understood at first. Clarke had been out there the last he'd looked. He'd helped Raven into the infirmary and left her with Abigail Griffin, and when he'd returned, Marcus was there.

Clarke was not.

The wrinkles in Kane's forehead and the guilty way he wouldn't answer Bellamy's questions stole the strength from Bellamy's legs. He'd nearly collapsed into the dirt there, and when he heard Kane tell Abby that Clarke had turned and ran, well...Bellamy wouldn't admit that he'd needed to sit down so badly that he hadn't even made it to the wall before he collapsed to the cold metal floor.

Raven had spent four days in the infirmary, and Bellamy had spent four days alternating between throwing himself into reinforcing their defenses and staring off mindlessly into the treeline. He went to visit her the morning of the fifth day. She was awake, brace on her knee and standing just inside the infirmary, hiding behind the canvas flap.

"You alright?" he asked her for the first time. She scoffed at him, looked him up and down, and let him lead her out of the Arc Fall station into the sunlight and to Finn's grave. Bellamy had asked to bury him with the rest of the 100's graves. Finn's mother, a soft eyed woman that had more love in her than Bellamy had ever seen, had agreed and gone to the original drop ship with Bellamy and a few of the guards to dig a grave and put the Spacewalker to rest.

Raven cried for hours, but at the end, she stood up, straightened her broken spine, and lent him enough strength to not collapse in his tent when they returned. That night, around a campfire, he told her that Clarke had run. Octavia and Lincoln were with them, and when Raven lashed out against their blonde-headed, missing leader, Lincoln had set her straight with a ferocity Bellamy hadn't seen in him.

"They would have taken his hands first," he said, voice gravel and strong. "Then his eyes or tongue. It would depend on who had the knife and if they enjoyed his screaming. And he would have screamed. For what he did, they would keep him screaming for hours before he passed out. If he was lucky, they'd have killed him then. If he wasn't, they'd have let him regain consciousness before turning to fire and the lash." He spoke while staring into the fire, as if he was staring into a memory. His fists clenched tightly as his eyes snapped up to the zero-G mechanic.

Bellamy could see the tears threatening to spill through the young woman's careful resolve. He thought that she might fight them, blink them away or tilt her head back to will them back into her eyes. Instead, she squared her jaw and let them roll down her cheeks as she stared at Lincoln.

"Am I supposed to thank her?"

"Yes," he said. There was no room for hesitance or question in his response. It was fact in his mind. "That was mercy."

"Mercy would be to let him live!" Raven shouted, standing quickly and lashing out with her injured leg, sending a brand from the fire skittering across the ground, burning the dry grass as it went. Octavia sprang up to contain it as the pair stared at each other.

"There isn't room for that kind of mercy here," Lincoln said simply. He had hardened in his time as a Reaper, and Bellamy had to wonder at what was running through the man's head.

"Clarke's mercy broke her anyway," Octavia said, tossing the burning branch back into the fire. "If that's what it does to the people that show it, I don't want any part of it." Bellamy tried to meet his sister's eyes, but she refused, staring only into the fire.

"O, that's not-"

"Don't tell me what it is or isn't. If Lexa had spared Finn's life, her people would have killed her. Clarke spared Finn unimaginable suffering, and she's condemned herself for it. You've all condemned her for it."

"We aren't-"

"You haven't gone after her," Octavia cut him off again, and Bellamy found that he didn't have words to counter what she'd said. They hadn't gone after her. Hell, it had been eight days, there might not be a Clarke to go after anymore. The thought turned his stomach sour.

"We're supposed to go bring her back?" Raven asked, but the vitriol was out of her voice. She sank back to the bench. "After she killed Finn?"

"Yes!" Octavia shouted at the same time that Lincoln's strong voice opposed her.

"No," he said. He met Octavia's fired up gaze for a moment before he spoke again. "You aren't trained for war. Your people sent you down here, and you've done your best to become warriors. You aren't what you need to be to survive here."

"We've done pretty good so far," Raven said. Bellamy had to wonder if it was her inherent need to defy anything grounder that had her speaking.

"Most of your people are either in the ground or in Mount Weather. You are a bird with a broken wing. Your leaders have lost their strength. Your group will disappear within the Sky People's before the end of the moon cycle."

None of them could defy him as they sat there, and after several long minutes of silence, he stood and let Octavia lead him away to the Arc Fall Station.

"We aren't going to disappear," Raven said after nearly an hour of silence. "I am not broken. You are not weak. Clarke...Clarke is not weak."

"What do you want me to do, Raven?" Bellamy asked, completely devoid of any of the strength she said he possessed.

"We're going to find Clarke," she said simply, rising on her good leg. "Meet me at my gate in thirty minutes."

He'd gone out with her two days ago, and they'd spent that time scouring the forest for signs of her only to return empty handed. Bellamy didn't think he could stay awake any longer, and the deep bruising beneath Raven's eyes told a similar story.

"We need to get some sleep, try again tomorrow with clear heads," he said. She scrapped at her bowl with her spoon.

"I think. . ." She paused, staring at that empty bowl as if it was going to swallow her. "I think I know where she's been hiding."

"You think you know where she is," Bellamy said, tasting the words on his tongue and finding them bitter. "How long have you known?"

"Since the first day," Raven admitted. "I wasn't ready to find her."

"You weren't ready." He didn't know if he wanted to flip the table to get to her faster to strangle her or hug her.

"Get some sleep. In the morning. . . In the morning, meet me at the gate." She left him there, sitting at the bench, a half eaten stew in front of him.

-ReincarnatedPoet: Demon on a Lead-

On the sixth day, Clarke moved everything in the bunker. She organized. She arranged. She made her own world. She set up what she needed. She packed away what she didn't. She burned the two blank sketchbooks and broke the pencils until they were nubs too small to grip. All except for two carefully detailed sheets of paper.

On the seventh day, Clarke destroyed her world. On the seventh day, she destroyed herself.

On the eighth day, Clarke found the hatch beneath the bed. She found the large white pipes, cut short on either end and sealed with a fuse coming through. On that eighth day, the world gave back her purpose.

-ReincarnatedPoet: Demon on a Lead-

Bellamy let Raven lead him through the undergrowth, a gun cradled across his arms. He felt more comfortable out in the forest than he did within the confines of the camp. He felt more comfortable with Murphy at his back. If that wasn't a sign that everything had gone to shit than nothing else ever would be again.

Raven had scoffed and gave token protest when Bellamy had shown up with Murphy, but she'd quieted quickly. They needed someone else. Bellamy needed someone else to keep him from killing Raven if her idea didn't pan out. He needed someone else to keep him from killing himself if they found out she'd been right but too late.

"Someone's been here," Raven said, stopping their trek.

"Where?" Murphy asked, eyes sweeping the area.

"Here," she said, stepping forward and dropping into a crouch. She winced and propped her braced leg out to one side as she swept some leaves and brambles to the site. There, beneath the undergrowth, a dull-grey, metal hatch came into view.

"What is this?" Bellamy asked as Raven turned the hatch and pulled it open.

"A bunker," she said. "Clarke and Finn found it. She called it the art supply store. I'd offer to climb down first, but. . ." She gestured down at her leg.

"I'm going," Bellamy said, stepping forward and handing his gun off to Raven. "Clarke!" he called down into the dimly lit bunker. If she was there, she wasn't responding. He climbed halfway down the ladder before dropping to the ground.

In the bunker, three candles had been lit long enough to melt down to flickering nubs. It only took him half a moment to realize that she wasn't there. Murphy was already easing Raven down the ladder though, so he couldn't demand they leave.

"She's been here," Raven said, walking across the bunker, eyes flickering back and forth, taking in changes and cataloguing newness. "This is. . . Why would she burn these?" She nudged the charred remains of two sketchbooks with her toe.

"Who knows?" Murphy asked as he dropped into view. "Where would she go from here?"

"Looks like she was planning on coming back," Bellamy said, eyeing the candles. The rest of the bunker was a disaster of overturned bins and a bed that had been ripped apart. He crossed to the small work bench and glanced at the two drawings there. One was what he assumed was a map of the area, detailed with the drop ship, Arc Fall, and an X labeled: M.W.

"This look familiar to anyone?" he asked, holding it up for Raven to glance at.

"That's her map of Mount Weather," the mechanic said quickly, coming over to stand beside him. "This looks like the drawing she made of the layout. We never found a way in other than the dam though."

"She wouldn't be dumb enough to go on her own," Murphy said, but hearing the words seemed to make him reconsider them. "Fuck."

"We've got to go," Bellamy said, crossing to the ladder and pulling himself up, hands skipping rungs in his hurry. He did not wait for Murphy or Raven. He didn't hear them as he ran through the forest. Even as he stood at the small flood plain at the bottom of the dam, he wasn't sure where they were.

"Come on Princess," he muttered, eyes searching the river that flowed away from the dam and up along the top. It was a massive structure, and he idly wondered how she'd survived the jump. The longer he stood there, staring up at the little recessed areas that he assumed were paths into the mountain, he couldn't help but think that one of them appeared deeper, darker than the rest. His sharp eyes told him that there was something dangling from the upper rim down to that inlet.

There was a rolling, echoing explosion before his mind caught up to his eyes. The ground beneath his feet roiled, and he took two stuttering steps to right himself even as his eyes flew up to that tunnel. Black smoke rolled out in waves before several more explosions sounded in quick succession.

His stomach fell as more smoke followed and pieces of the dam started to crumble. Water sputtered and rushed out of new cracks, and just as that tunnel started to collapse onto itself, a blonde-headed form launched itself from the tunnel, flying through the air amongst the smoke and debris.

"Clarke!" Raven's voice screamed out from behind him. He hadn't even known that the young woman was there, and despite the knee-jerk reaction to turn and find her, he couldn't take his eyes off of the free falling blonde. Her legs ran in the air, arms circling out to either side of her, desperately trying to find something for purchase.

Bellamy could hear Raven now, her uneasy steps sending rocks and brambles skittering. She'd only taken a few steps before Clarke hit the river, bobbing head above the water for a second before she disappeared beneath the current.

-ReincarnatedPoet: Demon on a Lead-

On the eighth day, Clarke felt her body flying through the air, a rush of exhilaration rising in her throat as she threw herself off of the dam.

On the eighth day, Raven felt her heart flying through the air, a bubble of anxiety rising in her throat as she watched Clarke fall.

-ReincarnatedPoet: Demon on a Lead-

Jasper sat on one of the lower beds, elbows on his knees and head in his hands. Harper had been missing for two days, and no matter how much they asked after her or how much they scoured the compound, they couldn't find her.

He'd sent her out into the hall. They'd been so excited when they'd left that they hadn't noticed she wasn't there, wasn't watching their backs as she'd been told. And now she was gone. Just like Clarke.

God, he'd called Clarke crazy. He'd sent Harper out into the hall.

He destroyed everything he stared. He drove Clarke away, toward life in one of the cages or to her own death or to freedom without them. He pushed Maya to betray her own people, confused her to a point where even he wasn't sure how long it would take her to straighten everything out in her mind. Then he'd told Harper she was the lookout, to wait in the hall because she didn't have the skill to be in the office.

Last night, he swore he'd heard her screaming. He'd woken Monty up to ask him if he could hear it, echoing through the vents. Monty had told him he'd been dreaming and to go back to bed. Jasper had been up the rest of the night.

Something had happened an hour ago to distract most of the guards, and they'd all been ordered back to their barracks. Miller had taken a quick head count and Jasper vaguely recalled hearing him say they were all there, minus Harper.

Minus just one more of the one hundred.

A shout broke the air following by a bone jarring explosion. He was jerked sideways, thrown against the metal railing forcefully enough that it toppled sideways. A dull ache throbbed in his shoulder, but that was all of the damage he could catalogue in the front of his mind. Dust had blown from the ventilation system, and the last of the one hundred were thrown about the barracks, all in different levels of unrest.

Miller was shouting to someone, helping another off the ground, and in the next moment, Monty was at Jasper's shoulder, helping him up and steadying him as a series of smaller jarring explosions rocked them on their feet.

An alarm sounded deeper in the compound.

"What's going on?" Monty asked, voice rising over the sound of the alarm. The lights cut for a moment, casting them all into darkness for a long minute before the back up generators kicked in and a dull halogen glow cast them all into a faint shadow.

"I don't know," he said, gripping Monty's elbow for a moment before pushing him toward one of the younger teens that was struggling to stand on a twisted ankle.

"Miller!" Jasper pushed a mattress out of the way, struggling toward the dark haired young man as he did another head count, checking on everyone as they tried to settle themselves.

"We know what that was?" Miller asked, eyes flickering from the cameras to the door. It was hot and stagnant in the barracks, musty and...cool?

"What is that?" Jasper asked, feeling the cool rush of air that swept through the barracks. The smell of the air in Mount Weather was always clinical and processed, removing all radiation from the ventilation system before it was passed through the compound. The air that came through the vents now was almost sweet, charged and clean like a thunderstorm.

"That's...oh, god," Miller stood slack, jaw falling open. The screaming outside of the barracks made sense in that moment. "Someone blew the vents."

"Blew the...the ventilation system?"

"Yeah." Miller turned toward the door, trying to open it only to find it locked. "We have to get out of here."

"Why? We need-"

"Who do you think they're going to blame if any of them survive this?" Outside, the siren wailed over the sound of human screams. Those screams were slowly being drowned out as they faded.

"They're dying." Monty had come up behind them, supporting a young girl across his shoulders.

"Let them," Miller said. "We've got to get out of here. Jasper, you said Clarke found that hatch. Do you think you can get us back there?"

"Yeah, yeah, I can."

"Good, let's get past this door."

Jasper steeled himself to getting through the metal door. He steeled himself against the fact that Harper wasn't with them. Against the thought of Maya outside, exposed to radiation that would kill her. There were a lot of things he was going to have to get over in the coming days, if they were going to survive. This was just another of them. Another page in the history book that was going to be the fall of the Sky People. As they pried open the doors, he wondered who would write that book, and if they'd be heroes or villains.

-ReincarnatedPoet: Demon on a Lead-

"Bellamy, I can't swim," Raven was by his shoulder. The dark eyed leader wasn't sure how long it had taken to get her there, but there she was, shaking his shoulder and pushing him toward the water.

"Do you see her?"

"No, I don't, Bellamy, come on." She was pulling at his arm, half-terrified and half-frenzied as she lead him toward the water. It took a flash of blonde hair nearly out of sight for him to take control of his body again. He passed the gun off to Raven's waiting hands and dove for the water.

It was cold, startlingly compared to the stifling heat of the day, and he nearly inhaled on instinct as his head went into the water. He forced his limbs to cooperate, swimming with the current, trying to catch up to the flash of blonde hair that he saw down river. Vaguely, he was aware of Raven shouting direction as she hobbled along the riverbank.

He put his head down, ignoring the stinging cold against his face as he pushed himself, trying to catch up. He didn't know how to swim really. What he'd learned, he'd learned goofing around in small springs, but he put what skill he'd gained to the test.

It was too long, in the end, when he finally caught up and found the blonde, tossed against a rock and pinned under the water by the current. She was limp as he pulled her to the bank, swearing and slipping against the moss covered rock.

Raven helped him, meeting him halfway into the river and easing the young woman onto dry land, where she lay, limp and blue lipped against the grey of the stone.

"Come on, Clarke," Raven said, helplessly tapping at her cheek, her panicked mind trying to remember what do to with a drowning victim. They'd had a couple, since they'd been sent to the earth, but none of them had made it. Clarke had tried something, once, when the young boy who'd been under the water too long had gotten to her quickly, but Raven couldn't make her mind remember.

Bellamy sat there on his backside, legs sprawled out between himself and Clarke, hands behind him and holding him upright. He almost wished there was more distance between them. Distance made it safer. Distance between himself and another failure, another body to bury.

"Jesus, don't you remember anything?" Bellamy didn't see Murphy as he came through the woods or Octavia and Lincoln flanking him. He did see when Murphy shoved Raven away and pressed two fingers beneath her jaw, feeling for a pulse. A flicker of relief passed over his face, and he tilted her head back.

Bellamy did see when he pressed his lips to hers.

"What're you doing?" he asked, springing forward. Clarke wouldn't have put up with the assault alive, and it seemed even more of a sin as she lay there, water logged and another failure. Before his hands could close over Murphy's neck and push him backward though, Lincoln was in the way, holding him back.

Murphy let Clarke go a moment, taking a deep breath and repeating his assault. Once more, Lincoln held him back until Murphy lurched back in surprise, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand as Clarke coughed and vomited up river water.

Bellamy wasn't sure if he wanted to kill Murphy or grip him tight in a hug that would damage both of their egos. It didn't matter though, because Lincoln had let him go, and he was helping Raven turn the blonde onto her side so that she didn't choke as she tried to regain her breath. He did have time to reach one hand out, level it firmly against Murphy's shoulder and squeeze. Murphy nodded to him once before the pair of them returned their attention to the girl.

She coughed and sputtered for several long minutes, shaking and shivering in the chill of the afternoon. Her skin was paler than usual, and Bellamy pushed her hair back behind her ear to expose a cut along her hairline.

"I need to learn to swim," she said to herself, staring down at the rocks beneath her. She shivered as she spoke, pushing herself upright to her knees. She turned and looked behind her, toward the dam and the smoke billowing out from the destroyed tunnel. The dam itself appeared to have stabilized, but more water was coming forth if the way the water was rising said anything. The ground had been dry when Raven and Bellamy had drug her up onto it, but now the river was lapping at their shoes.

"I've got to go," she said, startled suddenly to standing. She swayed slightly, once she gained her feet and had taken several steps before she collapsed back to her knees. Bellamy was up and following her in the next moment, helping ease her to her backside while Octavia hovered over her like an over-worried mother.

"What did you do?" Lincoln asked, and when Bellamy looked toward him, the grounder was staring, grave faced at the damn.

"I killed the Mountain Men," Clarke said, and her voice was all quiet strength and a darkness that Bellamy hadn't ever heard there before. He laid a hand against her upper back, trying to lend her what warmth he could, but he found that even as he tried, he was shivering.

"You blew the ventilation system," Raven said after a moment. When Clarke didn't respond or turn to look at the mechanic, Bellamy knew that they had much further to go than they'd thought.

"What would that do?" Murphy asked. Of course he would ask. They hadn't shared their plan with Murphy. They hadn't trusted him, but now, Bellamy was going to have to reconsider that.

"The Mountain Men can't handle the radiation still in the atmosphere," Clarke offered, answering Murphy and only further cementing Bellamy's concern. "I blew up their ventilation system. It's sucking air in from the surface, air that's saturated in radiation."

"So you're frying them," Murphy said bluntly, shrugging one shoulder. "Seems fair. How do we get everyone out?"

"Hadn't thought that far ahead," Clarke said simply. "There have to be more outlets, different surface doors that we just haven't found yet. I need to find them." She used Bellamy's shoulder to help lever herself to her feet, more steady this time as she walked toward the damn.

"You need to take five minutes to recover from falling two hundred feet into a river and drowning," Octavia said, cutting Clarke off with a sharp look and hands on her hips.

"I'm fine. We have to make sure the explosion didn't-"

"Rip a hole in the structural integrity and bury our friends alive?" Raven asked. She was standing now, hands loosely at her sides but with a stiffness to her back that begged for war. Clarke didn't answer. She simply let her head fall forward slightly, as if she could no longer meet anyone's eyes.

"Why are you all here? You're needed at Camp Jaha."

"We haven't been needed anywhere since they brought the stations down," Murphy countered. Bellamy felt as though he ought to be saying something, anything, to get them to stop arguing, to focus on one task and see it through.

"The grounders haven't gone back on the peace treaty," Bellamy said at last. He stood up, fighting the urge to rub at his arms and instead crossed them over his chest. It was a powerful stance, one he knew would both minimize his shivering and make him look more in control. He had to wonder how Clarke stood so still despite the cold. "Kane, Jaha and Griffin aren't going to send anyone out here to bring our people back. We have to get it done. If you know where we need to be, you tell us, but you tell us, you don't go off on your own. Not again, Princess."

He didn't miss the tensing in her, the straightening to her spine as she turned toward him for the first time in over a week.

"You will never call me that again," she said firmly. Her face lacked its usual fire, the tenseness to her jaw and pride in her eyes that made her his Brave Princess. He met her eyes for several long seconds, trying to challenge her, make her rise to the occasion.

She disappointed him for the first time since he'd met her.

"If you're going, come on. We don't have time, and if you're going to slow us down, stay behind." Clarke was a wall of something dark and glacial, an impenetrable array of sharpness that kept everything both inside of her and out.

She turned, brushing past Octavia and giving Lincoln a firm nod as he fell into step beside her. Bellamy had to wonder when it became Clarke that understood the pain in the one-time-Reaper and not himself, not Murphy, not even Finn. He had to wonder, if Lincoln was so willing to flank her, give her strength, did that mean he thought she was as un-redeemable as he felt he was?

They moved out in silence, far more uncomfortable and less necessity than they had in the past. This was the core of everything. Clarke. Bellamy. Raven. Octavia. Murphy. Lincoln. They were what was left of the driving force that sparked nearly everything that had happened since they came to the ground.

Jasper. Monty. Miller. They were all waiting for them in the mountain. The last of what was alive-if they were alive.

"Come on," Clarke called back over her shoulder as she lead them up a steep incline. She was leaning forward, mimicking Lincoln as he climbed up the hill. He used the trees to push himself up, and those able were following in his footsteps, literally. Occasionally, the grounder turned and helped Octavia up a particularly tricky maneuver. After a while, Raven was forced to turn back and wait for them at the base. There was a lot she could do with pride and stubborn ire, but this was not one of those things.

As they crested the incline, the hill tapered off, flattening out to a wide prairie dotted with yellow flowers and surrounded by trees. Out in the middle stood a small grey bunker entrance. It appeared calm with a gentle breeze rolling the grasses and flowers, but the metal building put everyone on edge.

"Think we can pry it open?" Murphy asked, taking a step forward.

"We don't have to," Clarke said. She drew a small plastic bag from her waterlogged pack. Inside, one pipe bomb remained, safe in its plastic prison.

"How many of those did you make?" Octavia asked.

"I found ten of them." She paused a moment. "I was cleaning this bunker when I-"

"The bunker you tore apart?" Murphy asked, cutting the blonde off and smirking at her. "Yeah, looked like cleaning, Princess." Bellamy waited for the rebuke to come, but Clarke ignored him, simply crossing to the door and lighting the fuse with an Arc Station lighter. She lay it down beside the door, crouching as the fuse caught and hesitated a moment.

"Clarke!" Bellamy shouted, and as if broken from a spell, she rose, sprinting away from the structure. The blast wasn't small, but the bunker was solid, and the door only peeled away from the concrete and reinforced steel.

"Well, let's be bad guys," Murphy said, and somewhere in the back of Bellamy's mind, he recognized it as a quote from one of the old recordings from before the nuclear fall out.

"I can find where they were being held. It shouldn't take long." Clarke lead them across the field and into the compound. Beneath the cement and metal and earth, they all fell silent, spurred on by the need to be done with their purpose.

It wasn't ten minutes before Lincoln held a hand up, ears sharper than the rest.

"There are voices," he said, gesturing in front of them and down a hallway to the left. Clarke nodded. She hesitated a long moment, giving up the lead and letting Murphy, Lincoln and Octavia move ahead. She grabbed Bellamy's elbow, pulling him back for a moment.

"Wha-"

"Go, get them back out the way you came. I have to do something, and it's going to take longer than getting the rest of our people."

"What could you have to do that's more important than getting them out of here?"

"I didn't say more important," she snapped. "I said it had to be done. Get them out. Get them home. Don't wait for me."

"We're not leaving you here," he argued, annoyed with the stubborn turn of her lips. It was at least familiar as opposed to the emptiness that had been there since he'd pulled her from the river.

"Yes, you are," she said. "There are people trapped in here that need to be released. I made a promise, Bellamy. I've broken enough of those recently, don't you think?" The blunt reference to her promise to Finn and Raven shocked him, and she took the opportunity to duck under his arm and disappear down another hall.

-ReincarnatedPoet: Demon on a Lead-

Jasper and Miller guided everyone out of the barracks, stepping over the dead guard and stripping him of his weaponry. Down the hall another body lay propped against the wall, and Jasper tried to ignore it as they counted heads coming through the small opening they'd made in the barracks door.

"We blow a hole in the vent system, rip open the front door, and you all are still crawling out of your beds."

Miller reacted first, pivoting and holding the pole they'd broke off one of the beds up in defense.

"Easy." Jasper sighed at that voice. Octavia was someone he'd recognize by voice until the day he died. He turned toward them, finding her with Lincoln and Murphy, standing there with a big semi-auto.

"Never thought I'd see you three here," Jasper said, smile splitting his face. "How'd you know-"

"Clarke," Octavia said simply, shrugging one shoulder and glancing behind her. Bellamy came through the darkness, a distracted smile on his lips.

"Jasper," he said, "Miller." The big man pulled both of them into him in an awkward hug before releasing them and counting heads that were still coming out of the door. "Everybody?"

"But Harper," Miller offered, a proud puffing to his chest.

"Where is she?"

"We don't know. Got taken two nights ago, we think." Jasper felt guilt settle onto his shoulders for a moment until Bellamy's hand shoot one of them.

"You did good. Lincoln, think you can take a group up? Get them started down toward the river?" The grounder nodded, leading off a group of the survivors as more crawled through the gap. "Murphy will meet you with more at the top."

"Where's Clarke?" Monty asked, refusing to leave to follow Lincoln until Jasper did.

"She said she had something to do," Bellamy answered both Monty and Octavia's curious gaze.

"The grounders," Monty said as if it was the obvious choice. "She found out about the grounders before she escaped."

"She didn't want to," Bellamy said softly. "She'd have come back for you, if she could."

"We know," Jasper offered. "She wouldn't let us die here."

"No, she wouldn't." Murphy cut down their conversation sharply. "Can we get out of here before we sing the praises of our Princess?"

"Murphy," Bellamy said sharply, giving him a quick shake of his head.

"What? Just because you-"

"Take this group up," Bellamy cut Murphy off before he could say anything more. The pair of men stared at each other a short moment, both challenging the other, before Murphy nodded and disappeared down the tunnel, another batch of lost Sky People trailing along behind him.

-ReincarnatedPoet: Demon on a Lead-

Clarke picked her way through the tunnels, trying to visualize the map she'd made in her mind. It didn't matter. The memory was burned into her brain. When they left, when everyone was safe and the remaining one hundred were having children of their own, Clarke would remember. She would remember the dark, halogen lit tunnels. She would remember the clinical anesthetic smell of the medical bay. She would remember human bodies confined to cages.

A shutter raced up her spine as she forced open the medical bay door. No one had locked down this section of the compound when the ventilation system blew, and she stepped over a dead physician, burned and stinking, as she made her way toward the heavy door to the holding area.

Inside, the grounders in the two rows of cages shifted uneasily, and Clarke had to beat at each lock several times with a broken piece of pipe before they came loose. Those that had been there the longest didn't stir, didn't even move as they were freed. The others sprang from their cages, wild animals again freed. Most helped the others, and in the end, the room had been cleared.

At the end of the small holding area, another door stood, tall and menacing, and Clarke guided the grounders out toward the main hall before she went back to that door.

It was reinforced, heavy steel, and no matter how she pried with the piece of pipe, it only broke under the stress.

On the Arc, Clarke was not a criminal by the traditional sense of the word, but since she'd been put in the Sky Box and sent down to the earth, she'd lived with them. They had a different way of looking at things. If the lock wouldn't give, you just had to take it off at the hinges.

The flat piece of metal had once been used as a medical tray, clinical and strong, and it served perfectly to shimmy between the bolt and the hinge. The first came smoothly, easily, well greased and free. The second was more difficult, older than the first and rusting. She'd managed to get it halfway when a crackle cut the air.

"Step away from the door." The voice came over the intercom in the holding cell.

"No," she answered, working the piece of metal against the bolt.

"Step away from the door, or I will be forced to-"

"You will cooperate, or we will kill whoever survived the radiation," Clarke said, cutting the voice off as the bolt snapped free. It only took a good tug at the hinge for the door to come free, clattering to the ground with a heavy clang that nearly trapped Clarke's feet beneath it.

Inside, the room was the same poorly lit halogen, and Clarke could make out the form of a decontamination suit as it stood behind a table.

"Release the grounders you're keeping here. Release them all, and I won't kill you," Clarke said. She hadn't ever threatened to kill someone before, not outwardly. She'd always been more quiet smiles and quick hands. Now, it seemed fitting. Now...well...

"You aren't going to kill me, Clarke, you aren't a murderer." The voice was clearer now, and while Clarke couldn't remember her name, she remembered her face. Dark eyes and dark hair. Clinical detachment that went beyond what was healthy. A medical doctor reduced to playing God.

The table in front of the woman held one of the one hundred, and from the distance, Clarke thought it might have been Harper.

"What did you do to her?"

"If you calm down, we can talk about-"

"What did you do?"

"You know that blood transfusions are only temporary; we had to go to the source." That threw Clarke for a long moment, until she saw the scalpel on the table, the large bore needle and the bandages on either side of Harper's hips. The girl was unconscious but still breathing.

"Bone marrow," Clarke said, taking a step forward, the pipe she'd wielded since the door in hand. "She's still alive. Can she walk?"

"Probably."

"Give me the sedative reversal agent," Clarke commanded, holding her hand out. She was close enough now that she could hear the delicate breaths that the young woman sighed in false sleep.

"I can't do that," she said. "You need to leave."

"I'm leaving as soon as I have Harper," Clarke countered. "Release the grounders. You've got to have a release latch. There were too many cells to be manual."

"We do." She held both hands out in front of her, devoid of anything but a scalpel. "But I'm not going to help you. We've worked too hard to give up. My people-"

"Your people are dead. Most of them, anyway." Clarke held the pipe out in front of her, an extension of her hand, an infinitely less delicate weapon than she'd last wielded. "I'm assuming that suit has kept the radiation from you, but it wouldn't take much for me to tear a hole though the fabric. We saw that in space, you know. Once in a while, someone would brush against the wrong thing on one of the shuttles and their suit would tear. It didn't take long for them to die. I wonder how long it would take you."

"We aren't killers, Clarke," the woman said. There was a panic to her tone though, one that wasn't quite sure if what she was saying was true.

"This would have killed Harper? You'd have taken and taken and taken until she was unable to make her own blood?" Clarke looked down at the sleeping girl. "There are side effects to what you've done. She could break a hip on the way out of here. Down here? That's a death sentence."

"I'll let the grounders free," the woman said. "See? Look, we can deal with this like adults, Clarke." She tapped furiously at a small computer screen, rolling through several different commands before the screen flickered to a live feed of doors sliding open and men and women making their way from their cells. Some didn't leave. Others were helped, but all those living would make their way to the surface. Grounders were nothing if not self sufficient.

Clarke let the pipe relax in her hand as she stepped closer, reaching out and undoing the straps that kept Harper in place.

"You're right," she said. "We can handle this like adults."

She felt along the angle of the girl's jaw, pleased with the firm, steady thump beneath her fingertips. Harper's forehead creased at the pressure, and Clarke let her hand fall away from the girl's neck. The physician was only a few paces off, three feet at the most, and in a quick lunging strike, Clarke had used the pipe to snip through the loose fold of fabric at the woman's armpit.

"What did you-" The woman stopped speaking, quickly fumbling her free hand toward the large tear in the fabric, but it was too wide. In a matter of moments, her clear speech turned to screams that faded out to low whimpers as she fell to the ground, hands trying to dig at the blisters on her face through the decontamination suit.

"Why would you..." she trailed off, unable to finish the sentence as the radiation coursed through her system.

"Adults sent children to the Earth alone. Adults killed us one by one from the trees. Adults locked us in an underground facility to harvest our blood and bone marrow. This is the most human thing I've seen an adult do this week."

Clarke didn't look away until the woman stopped breathing, her last rattling exhalation coming out as a high pitched whine between blistered lips.

"Clarke?" Harper's voice shocked the blonde from her study of the dead woman. She had pushed herself upright onto her elbows, but the pain in her hips had stopped her from going further. "Is she dead?"

Clarke thought about lying. A lie would be a pretty thing that sang in the girl's ears. It would taste better on Clarke's lips. It would allow another minute of child-like innocence.

"Yes," Clarke said. The tension drained from Harper's face.

"Can you help me up?"

Harper took a few steps tentatively once they got her standing, and she whimpered with each one as they made their way toward the door, the thin hospital gown tied behind her and the sheet draped over her shoulders. Clarke had offered to go find her clothing, but Harper had wanted to get out as soon as she could.

"Just make it to the surface. The rest should still be there, and if you'll get that far, I know a brought shouldered felon who'd be more than willing to carry you."

"Who all-she took a shuttering breath-who's here?"

"Octavia, Murphy, Raven, Lincoln and Bellamy," Clarke said, trying to distract the girl as she walked her up a short flight of stairs. "You want Bellamy biceps or Lincoln biceps for the walk back to Camp Jaha?"

"I don't want Octavia to kill..." She paused, drawing a long breath through her teeth. "Camp Jaha?"

"They brought the Arc Station down," Clarke said, easing her up another step.

"How much further?" Harper asked, and when Clarke looked at her, she could see sweat beaded on her forehead.

"Just another couple flights. Did you have parents alive, up on the Arc?" Clarke felt bad for asking. Felt bad for not already knowing, really, but it was a distraction. "There are hundreds of survivors that we've found and they say the other stations might have camps too."

"My mom got floated." Another step. Another wince. "My dad was alive."

"We'll find him, if he made it down here," Clarke promised. Another flight and Clarke could smell the sweet fresh air.

"Clarke?" Harper asked, and the blonde waited for her to continue but the words never came. Glancing over at her, the woman was pale, staring down at her legs where they peaked out from the hospital gown.

Blood stained her right hip, the one furthest away from Clarke, and ran down a thin leg until it dotted the floor.

"What did she do? What did she do to me?" The questions came quickly, her voice pressured with little breaths punctuating the words. Clarke had to calm down or she would hyperventilate.

"It's going to be alright," Clarke soothed, pushing her onward, anything to burn the oxygen she took in with her gasping breaths. "My mom's down here. She's got a medical bay all set up, and she's going to-"

"No!" Harper pulled away, took a half step on her own and collapsed against the metal wall. "No. Just us. Just you and Octavia or whoever else you need, but no one from up there. No one from here. Just...just what's left of us."

Clarke stood there a moment, looking at the young girl who struggled to keep herself standing. She had no intention of returning to Camp Jaha, not really. She didn't know what she was going to do after she walked them all back through that gate, the undoable done by so few and so young.

"Alright," Clarke agreed, taking up most of the girl's weight again. "Alright, just me."

"Just us," Harper agreed softly, limping along again. "We're family. The arc...the arc isn't anymore."

-ReincarnatedPoet: Demon on a Lead-

Bellamy stood at the mouth of bunker entrance, staring into the darkness. Behind him, he knew that Lincoln, Octavia and Murphy were helping their people down the incline, to Raven waiting below.

He'd been told to leave, to move on and that Clarke would catch up. It didn't sit well in his stomach. She'd left. She'd gone on her own to infiltrate a people that she suspected of just waiting to harvest the one hundred in some way or another.

"Bellamy?" Clarke's voice startled him from staring. Harper was leaning against her, wrapped in a sheet. There was blood staining the front of her gown, and if Clarke hadn't looked so calm, he'd have panicked.

"You alright, Harper?" Bellamy asked, watching as Clarke eased Harper out the door.

"Aren't you men supposed to sweep injured women off their feet?" Clarke groused, clearly struggling to keep the young woman upright without a wall to lean her against. It took a moment for Bellamy to process the annoyed glare and the grimace of pain that came from both women respectively.

In the next, he was easing Harper up off the ground, trying to minimize the pain she was in only to find that there was no good position. He glanced down at her pained face, already feeling the strain across his shoulders from trying to hold her out away from his body.

"Come on," Clarke directed, pressing against his shoulder and turning him toward the hill. "Get her down and we'll build a sledge. He'd never heard better words, even if it meant half sliding down the incline, using his legs to ease himself from tree to tree, trying to ignore the helps of pain each time Harper was jostled.

Muttered apologies and aching arms later, Bellamy was easing Harper to the ground, Jasper hovering around, trying to make her comfortable and offering his own apologetic ranting.

"She's not going to make it to your camp," Lincoln said solemnly, watching as the girl sat there, slowly bleeding into the ground.

"Yes, she will," Jasper snapped, turning to Clarke, who had just made it down the incline, a bag thrown over her shoulder that she hadn't had at the top. Bellamy had wondered where she'd gone when he was slowly easing himself and Harper down the hill but had been too distracted to find out. "You're going to fix this, right?"

Clarke dropped the bag, ignoring the question and unabashedly throwing the hospital gown up, exposing the girl from navel down. Jasper turned red, turning away and muttering about helping build the sledge. Bellamy watched unabashedly as Clarke forced the edges of a two inch cut closed and sutured them together despite the dull whimpering each time the needle slid into flesh. Slowly, the bleeding stopped, and Bellamy realized that he probably shouldn't have been staring.

"She going to be alright?" he asked Clarke as she straightened up. Harper had passed out, from pain or blood loss, Bellamy wasn't sure.

"She'll survive, but that her hips are going to be a problem for the rest of her life," Clarke said, voice clipped and all business formality.

"Like Raven's leg," Bellamy offered, waiting for her reaction. When none came, he glanced over toward the zero-G mechanic who was talking with Octavia and Monty.

"Hey, we got the sledge ready if you want to help me get Harper on it," Miller said, startling Bellamy with a hand on his shoulder. Bellamy nodded, helping to ease the unconscious girl onto the sled. When he straightened, Clarke had disappeared and was making her way through the woods, back toward Camp Jaha.

"She alright?" Miller asked from his elbow, and without looking, Bellamy nodded.

"Clarke says she's going to be fine."

"Not who I was talking about," Miller muttered, giving Bellamy a rough clap on the shoulder and following through the wood.

-ReincarnatedPoet: Demon on a Lead-

Raven had been limping along, trying to match pace with their resident junior physician for the better part of the past hour. The blonde was relentless in her pace, leaving them all far behind only to double back for a short time before disappearing again, a wraith in the shadows of the trees.

"She's avoiding me," she groused, watching as the pale head of hair once again disappeared among the trees.

"You two fighting again?" Monty asked, helping her over a fallen log. He'd been ultra-aware of her braced leg since he'd seen her standing, hands on her hips and a scowl on her face, at the bottom of the hill.

"Not fighting," Raven said, feeling a lump swell at the base of her throat. "She...she did something I didn't like. It was a mercy, but I wasn't in the mindset to understand." Talking about it was painful, both that she had lost Finn and that she might have waited too long to reach out to the woman that had both saved him and destroyed him.

Monty followed beside her in silence, his face drawn into a pensive grimace for a moment. "Hey Raven?"

"What?" She grunted against the tightening in her throat.

"Where's Finn?" Monty stumbled over a bramble but kept pace with her easily. "Bellamy survived the launch, and they were together."

Raven didn't respond, couldn't for several long minutes as they walked. Monty, bless his sensitive soul, didn't push her and simply waited. It was only after Clarke had ghosted back around and checked on them before disappearing again that Raven was mad enough to speak.

"He survived. He turned himself over to the grounders as a peace offering, and Clarke killed him." Hearing it out loud, sharp and in her ears in her own voice, was hard.

"Clarke killed him," Monty repeated, not challenging or questioning, just trying the words on his own tongue.

"Lincoln said it would have lasted days. She didn't have another option," Raven said, finding herself defending the other young woman. It was the first time she'd said that aloud too.

"Does she know you know that?"

Raven let the question die in the air and focused on walking. It wouldn't be long before they were at the main gate, not at the way they were pushing, but the sun was starting to sink below the tree line. It would be dark long before they were home.

"I'm going to check on Harper," Monty said softly. "You al-"

"I got here on my own; I can get back on my own." Monty's concern didn't rankle her the way Wick's did, but she still felt the need to send him off with a sharp retort. Off he went, and Raven couldn't bring herself to care, not with Finn's face in her eyes and Clarke's silence in her ears.

They made the gate that night, all intact and living, if uncomfortable and tired. Raven passed out shortly after with Clarke and Bellamy disappearing off to their own devices. Clarke followed Harper into the infirmary. Bellamy was rushed off by Marcus Kane and Thelonius Jaha, neither of them smiling.

Raven had slept through until daybreak, rising only after the camp had gotten up and moving. The return of their children had meant reunions abounding and celebrations until late into the night. Everyone rose later that morning, and when Raven finally strapped on her brace and left her tent-because who could sleep in the station after living out under the stars for so long?-to find breakfast.

It was pleasant, seeing the familiar faces around camp, moving in and around the survivors from the ARC station. Some smiled at her as they got their own breakfast with their parents. Others had grouped up, newly made orphans or those still waiting to see if other stations survived. Bellamy was back from his dealings withe Kane and Jaha because he had Miller and Jasper sitting across from him, their heads together and whispering among themselves.

She sat down next to Monty, elbowing him lightly as she did. He gave her one of his smiles, and she settled in comfortably. "Everyone settling in?" she asked.

"It's unbearable," Monty murmured, voice low and eyes glaring darkly at a passing guard. "That guy tazed me once because I wasn't out of bed and facing the wall quickly enough."

"Everyone has problems with the guards," Raven said, shrugging one shoulder. Those old problems seemed so distant on Earth. They had new concerns and new memories to buffer the old, at least in her mind. On the Arc, she used to dream about the men that had taken Finn away from her in the airlock that day. On the ground, she was still dreaming about the person that took Finn. At least the old dreams were less rough on her conscience.

"They won't let us out to do anything," he went on. Across from them, Jasper nodded in agreement.

"How're we supposed to go get what's left of your still if they won't let us out?" The question was light-probably the least of their real concern and more a joke than anything-and airy, making Monty smile at the memory.

"Kane announced earlier that the Chancellor is giving a speech later," Monty said. "I'm not sure who that is anymore. Jaha died. Jaha didn't die. Kane was Chancellor; now it's Clarke's mom. We did just fine without a Chancellor before."

"We also had Bellamy and Clarke," Jasper reasoned. "It's not like they're going to let them lead, not down here."

"Why not?" Monty countered, voice rising. He was agitated about more than the gate, but Raven couldn't put her finger on what. "We survived down here. We learned everything the hard way so that they could come down here and what? Take that knowledge and lock us back up?"

"No one is doing that," Raven said, trying to sooth his anxiety.

"Then what is the gate for?" He had a point, she supposed. It was there for their protection, to keep the darkness out. Except walls kept things in as well.

"I want to go back to the drop ship," Jasper said quietly, those big eyes flickering over the adults around them. "I want to see what we did, and I want to get that still."

The root of the problem, then, Raven thought. Jasper had been the one to rig the thrusters. He wanted to see the bodies, those that hadn't survived on either side. For a moment, Raven wanted to as well. She'd been there, she'd seen them, but they still littered the ground. No one had buried them, and by now the elements and animals would have weathered away the most of what had been their friends.

"I've got some things to do today," she said after a long five minutes of silence. "But after, I'll take you."

"How're we getting past the gates?" Jasper asked, eyes bright and a smile on his lips. "Of course there's a resistance!"

"A resistance?" Raven asked, raising an eyebrow at him.

"Not a resistance," Monty clarified. "The Resistance. You know, with capitals."

"Ahuh," she muttered, shaking her head at the way the two of them seemed to feed off of each other. "Sure, sure. The Resistance exists, and right now, it's a part of the gate that I can take the power out of so people can cross."

"You're amazing," Monty said softly, and when Raven looked at him, his cheeks had stained pink. He cleared his throat and turned back to Jasper. "We need code names."

"I'm obviously-"

Raven didn't listen to the rest of their banter, letting them get lost in their elaborate creation of a resistance that didn't exist. She ate quickly and quietly, leaving the boys with a wave and a smile.

-ReincarnatedPoet: Demon on a Lead-

Bellamy found Clarke two days after they'd walked through the gate. He'd gone looking at Raven's request, as the mechanic was stuck in the workshop with her boss's watchful eye. She'd been caught earlier that day messing with the wiring for Raven's Gate and had been spending most of the day trying to cover it up. She'd failed to find Clarke the day before and her worry became Bellamy's quickly. She didn't have to persuade him to seek her out. Where and how he found her was more than a little rankling.

Chancellor Griffin had swept her daughter into her arms the second they'd come through the gate, and she'd been taken off for debriefing. How Clarke had made it from the loving arms of her mother to the brig in less than forty-eight hours was lost on him.

He stared down at her, hands itching to cut the tie that kept her arms bound behind her back to a post. She refused to look at him, her eyes boring holes in the metal side of the arc. In the halogen lights of the arc, he could see the shadows beneath her eyes, the hollowness to her cheeks and the slump of her shoulders.

"I'm being put on trial," she said. He was happy she'd spoken. He wasn't sure his throat worked anymore.

"For what?" he asked, voice hoarse and tight. He already knew.

"We can't allow anyone to go outside of the law, not even for the best of intentions," Clarke said as if reciting an edict.

"You didn't do anythi-"

"They're calling it murder," Clarke said simply. "I went out there with the knife. I knew what I was going to do. Then I ran. I went against orders to retrieve the remaining one hundred. I risked their lives and their safety to bring them back without backup."

"No one's going to let them punish you for bringing their children back," Bellamy argued, a spark of what he'd been when the drop ship first fell igniting in his stomach.

"I still killed Finn. I knew what I was doing. I knew the consequences."

"The consequences of not doing something were worse!" he raged, voice firm now and raging. "I'll bring this down on their heads before they float one of mine for doing what they had to do."

"Jaha and Kane won't float me," Clarke said easily. "My mother is still Chancellor, but they have more control than she does now. I'm too valuable to float. Lexa refused to discuss the truce with any of them. She demanded Clarke of the Sky People." An odd little frown crossed her face at that.

"Because you're the reason there's a truce to begin with. If you hadn't-"

"She also said she'd speak with my second," Clarke said, the smile real this time, as if something was truly funny.

"You have a second?"

"Apparently, in Lexa's eyes, I'm your superior." He took a moment to process that, and something like pride swelled in his chest. "You brought Lincoln back, Bellamy. Lexa knows that you and Octavia brought him back. She's wiling to talk with the three of us and Lincoln, but not anyone from the arc."

"Then they need you. They're not going to put you on trial," Bellamy said firmly. And they weren't. They weren't. He just now remembered why.

He was Bellamy Blake.

She was Clarke Griffin.

They had, together and hating it, lead the survivors of the drop ship through acid fog and grounder wars and water serpent attacks and hallucinogenic berries. Somehow along the way, they had become leaders. They'd become survivors and friends. Since the arc station survivors had set up camp, they'd somehow forgotten that.

Bellamy remembered.

He slid his shiv down the length of rope they'd used to bind her, slicing through it with long, sawing strokes. It would need sharpening soon.

"What are you doing?" she asked, but she held her hands as far apart as she could, giving him room to work.

"We're proving a point," he said.

"About?"

"About how we won't be treated. About the strength of the children they sent down here to become adults. About how we will not be rolled over again." He had to bite into his tongue to keep anything further from vomiting from his mouth.

"They have a point here, Bellamy," Clarke said, and he pivoted to look at her. "We aren't cut out to lead a diplomatic mission with a group of people. I'm not qualified to be the physician. Harper insisted that I help her, me. My mother could have done a damn better job. Our people need to learn that we aren't in control anymore."

"Why?"

"Because we aren't!"

"Why not?" Bellamy could see the red raising on her cheeks. It was something he'd taken great joy in many times. When Clarke got angry, her face took on this faint flushing. It let him know when he'd gotten to her.

"Because we failed them!" she shouted at him, jerking her arms hard enough to break through the last fraying bits of rope. She was on her feet and pacing away in the next moment. "We have a field of graves, Bellamy. A field of them. We let those people down. We let ourselves down."

"And Kane or Jaha or your mother haven't?" he asked, rising to lean against the pole she'd been tied to. He could see the muscle in her jaw tick, as if she was struggling to correct him but couldn't find the words.

"Not like we have," she finally decided on.

"We fought every day to save lives, Clarke," he said, voice harsh. He didn't mean to be angry at her, but the way she dismissed them was infuriating. "We lost some of our people. We've saved more than half. In that same time, how many people died because of decisions made on the Arc? How many? How many died before from oxygen deprivation because they were too afraid to tell us all the truth?"

She had no response for him, and in a moment, she was the ghost of the girl she'd been, tired and worn and needing rest, but Clarke Griffin once more. His Brave Princess. They stood there for a few long moments, each drawing on the strength of the other.

"Hey, Bellamy, we gotta talk about-oh, hey Clarke," Octavia said. She was in the doorway, leaning there with a confidence that made Bellamy proud.

"Talk about what, O?" he asked, giving her a smile.

"Agent Spearhead and Papa Moonshine are trying to get Raven to flip the gate again. They've got most of the survivors together. They're raising some eyebrows about going to the drop ship. Guards aren't taking it well."

"Agent Spearhead? Papa Moonshine?" Clarke asked, confusion coloring her tone.

"Jasper and Monty. Don't ask me who let them pick their own names, but they've done it."

"Names for what?" Clarke asked.

"For the Revolution," Octavia said simply, a smile on her face. "Or the Resistance. I think they're calling it the Resistance." Clarke was smiling now.

"And what are we resisting?"

"Harsh tyrannical confinement akin to the Sky Box, apparently," Octavia said with an exasperated shake of her head. "You should know; they're declaring you one-half of their ring-leader. Bell, come on, seriously, if you two don't calm them down, we might have a problem."

"Come on, we just declared a truce; can't we be at peace for a few days?" he groused as he followed her from the ship, Clarke trailing half a step behind.

"Come on, Blake. Didn't you just say that we weren't going to let them roll over us again?" Bellamy was sure that Clarke would be the death of him in the coming hours, but at least she wasn't hiding out in a bunker in the forest or tied up in the brig.

It didn't take them long to find the commotion, given that half of the arc station survivors were gathered around to see a show down between the a good thirty of the remaining one hundred and Marcus Kane.

"We're not trying to make you feel confined. That's the last thing we want to do here, but we can't just let people come and go as they please," Kane said. His hands were at ease at his sides, his face a calm compassionate mask that Bellamy hadn't seen on the man before.

His main concern seemed to be Jasper and Monty, who had apparently instigated the whole thing. A smirking Raven wasn't far behind them, Wick watching on in amusement. Miller was on the edge, his father a firm presence at his back. Several of the others seemed to be doing the same, standing not far enough into their circle of defiance to be either inside or outside.

As Octavia stepped inside that no-man's land in between, Lincoln melted into place beside her, and not for the first time, Bellamy realized that the man had been good for her. He'd helped her find a strength that she'd never been allowed hiding beneath the floor.

He hesitated on the edge for a moment, the guards gathered with their weapons making him itchy. It would be easiest to pull Jasper and Monty aside, tell the others to go back to their work, and talk them down. A lot of things would have been easier in the past year.

"Clarke!" Raven shouted, drawing attention to the blonde. Marcus's eyes zero'd in on the girl, but they were soft, understanding and laced with something like concern.

Under the hawk eyes of the guards and the members of the one hundred, Clarke crossed to stand by Jasper, ignoring the way Raven tried to meet her eyes. Bellamy would have to corner the pair of them later, but for now, he stepped up beside her. Like a well rehearsed dance, those standing on the edges melded into the center. Even Miller, who had his father there, followed suit quickly, and to Bellamy's surprise, the older man went with his son.

"We were kept away from our children, Marcus," the man said, voice firm. He was easily a follower, a man that Bellamy could see as a guard, but he stood there between his son and the rest of the guard, like a leader. It was a quality that Bellamy had seen in Miller over the course of their time together. "We have peace with these tribesmen. We don't need these walls, not all the time. Open the gates. Let people out, or eventually, we will starve in our own prison."

"We will, just as soon as we can discuss a peace treaty in more depth. I can't in good conscience let those gates open knowing that you're not going to have anywhere to go to." He seemed like a torn man, one that knew what he wanted and what he must were two different things. He was tired, Bellamy realized. He didn't realize the weight of the earth's gravity until he was under it.

"Before our war with the grounders, we stored all our supplies in the drop ship. They're still there," Bellamy said. "We made a camp there once. I'll go talk to Lexa and get her blessing to move freely in the forest until we can have our treaty discussion."

"You can't just-"

"What you don't understand here is that you don't have a say in this." That was Abby Griffin's voice if he'd ever heard it, stern and serious. She was a good woman, really. Bellamy knew that, but it didn't mean that he liked her.

"What you don't understand here is that you can't keep up," Clarke countered, head coming up to stare her mother in the eye. "I blew the ventilation system to an underground compound with pipe bombs knowing it would kill the population inside. I threw myself off of a damn twice, and guess what, I still can't swim. I watched a woman die. I did all these things to get my people from a cage, Chancellor Griffin; don't put them back in one." Bellamy could feel a swelling of pride in his chest. It only grew when Raven slipped up behind the blonde and rested a hand against her shoulder.

Across the small distance, Abby had gone silent, her face a twisted mask of warring horror and pride.

"I have learned some things about these first Sky People," Lincoln said, startling everyone with his willingness to speak. "I've learned that they can be both as ruthless and cruel as our own warriors. I've learned that they are as intelligent and geared for survival as well. Since your people fell, I've also learned that they aren't Sky People anymore, and they can't go back from that."

Lincoln was right, afterall. They'd been a part of the earth for too long now, living in tents instead of in their fallen vessel, eating from the land instead of ration packs. The people of the arc still did both despite being on the ground for weeks.

Bellamy realized something in the next moment. Lexa would speak with them. She would speak with not the Sky People but Bellamy and Clarke and Octavia. She would speak with those that lead them, not the arc station. She did this because she knew. There was no war with Marcus Kane or Thelonius Jaha or Abby Griffin, not really. There was greater weaponry, surely, but the grounders would have to do little more than sit and wait. The Sky People would die behind their fences of starvation long before they were willing to send small enough groups out for hunting. The guard was too loud, too brash. The rest were too afraid of the trees and the green and the darkness of night.

"I was wrong," Clarke said suddenly. "We aren't grounders, but we aren't Sky People either. I don't know what we are, but we're not going to be locked in your cages again."

"No one's locking you in a cage, Clarke," Abby said, now a mother talking to her daughter. Bellamy resisted the urge to snort at that. Weren't there still red marks circling Clarke's wrists?

"If you weren't going to lock her up, what were you going to do?" Bellamy heard himself asking, but he couldn't take his eyes off of the blonde. "Electric lashes? Floating someone isn't as easy down here. There's no polite button that you push that opens the doors and sucks your problem into space." His eyes swept over his people until he found a pair of large eyes, staring uncomfortably around him. "Hey Murphy, bit more difficult, wouldn't you say?" He gave the young man a nod and a half smile, as much as he was willing to muster. A whisper fell through the remaining one hundred, and Murphy's eyes darted back and forth quickly before settling back on Bellamy.

"You were a pain in the ass to try and hang, Blake," he finally said. For a long moment, there was silence.

"You think he was a pain in the ass to hang, you should have watched them try to hang you," Octavia countered, fire and vitriol in her tone. Bellamy couldn't help but laugh at that, and soon, they were all laughing, John Murphy along with them.

"Either way," Bellamy said after a moment. "It's more messy down here. You only have so many options. If it wasn't a cage, what was it?"

"What was the punishment for absconding with the only bargaining chip we had? For letting that chip be taken? For risking all of our lives by bringing down the defenses of this camp to sneak out on her own devices? For the killing of one of our own, even as a mercy?" Thelonius Jaha was walking through the crowd, speaking as he went, voice firm and powerful in the way that it had been on the arc. "What do you think the punishment would be for that?"

He was asking Clarke, standing only a few paces in front of her, staring at her with sharp eyes.

"I put my own son in the Sky Box, Clarke. I am an honest man. What did I tell you would happen?"

The color had drained from the girl's face, and Bellamy felt the need to step between them. Except this was a familiar battle. It held an air of something that was dangerously like the taste of suicidal disregard that Clarke had shown herself since he'd found her in the river.

"Clarke?" he asked when she did not answer.

"Exile or death," she said simply. There was none of the joking manner she'd had not long ago, but it wasn't a defeated voice, either. "On the arc, the punishment for crimes wasn't death, not really. It was exile. No one actually pulled a trigger. No one strung a rope. They're learning how to kill down here, though. It's a bit more bitter on the tongue than exile, isn't it Thelonius?"

There was a hushed murmuring through both the remaining one hundred and the arc survivors. Bellamy knew that those that they brought back had heard what had happened to Finn, what Clarke had done. The pole was long ago taken down and burned for firewood, but there was a grave by the drop ship. The memory would not easily be erased.

Not in his mind anyway. Why should it be? He still couldn't get Atom's tortured face fading into pace out of his mind.

"Is Raven's Gate open?" Clarke called out, not really speaking to the mechanic but getting as close as she had in ten long days.

"Yeah," Raven said, startled a bit at the address.

"I'm going to speak with Lexa, figure out the terms of our peace and see if I can't bargain for a second village at the site of the drop ship, for those that can't stay here." Clarke walked away after that, going her own way just as Bellamy had seen done so many times before. With a nod to Marcus Kane, he shadowed the blonde until he walked beside her.

"Think this is going to go over smoothly?" he asked.

"They don't want us here," Clarke said in reply. "But they don't want us gone, either. They want a tool that they can take out and put away again. They want a demon on a lead, someone to do the hard things and shoulder the blame."

"You said Jaha couldn't float you," Bellamy muttered, keeping his voice down as they walked between arc survivors toward Raven's Gate. "Lexa would only talk to-"

"Jaha felt that Octavia would be better controlled. They have Lincoln here. She'd have to do what they said if she wanted him kept alive." She paused a moment, sliding beneath the dead wires out to freedom. "They don't know any of us anymore, Bellamy. I'd like to see them try and control Octavia of the Earth and Sky."

"Earth and sky?" Bellamy asked, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. "You come up with that all on your own? Jasper and Monty rubbing off on you?"

"Shut up, Rebel Leader," she muttered, but she was smiling.

"They're calling Raven Gate Master," Bellamy said, falling into the easy push and pull of conversation as they moved deeper into the forest. "I wonder if they're still calling you Princess."

He fell silent after that, realizing the slip he'd made all too quickly but not soon enough. Time passed quickly as they walked, and the first of Lexa's scouts could be seen in the trees, gesturing them onward every so often with drawn bows.

"It's not Finn anymore," Clarke said as they walked. "At first, it was. It was the acceptance. He thanked me, you know?"

"No," Bellamy said because what else could he say?

"He thanked me with his last breath, and I figure, if he's going to waste his last words like that, they must have meant something."

"Then what is it?" Because something was bothering her, something etched into her even when she was light hearted and bantering with him in the wood.

"Raven's screaming," she said after a long silence. Lexa's huts were all around them now, and grounders only gave them one path to walk. Before he could comment, they were in front of Lexa's tent, the woman herself standing in the doorway.

"Clarke of the Sky People," Lexa said, a frown on her lips. "You come to speak of the treaty as last."

"My first request in our peace, Lexa, is that you stop saying that I'm Sky People." Clarke said it so firmly that Bellamy wondered how long she'd been thinking of herself as someone other than the Arc. Lexa's lips quirked from a frown to a feral smile as she welcomed them into her tent. Clarke spent the next six hours as comfortably as Bellamy had seen her in days. Bellamy spent it terrified of that smile.

When they left, there were still discussions to be had, plans to make for raiding the reaper dens and capturing those still living. Arrangements with Camp Jaha would have to be made. Customs on both sides would need to be discussed so that unintentional insult wasn't given. Lexa had been slow to peace, but she took to it with a thorough mind and great vigor.

Bellamy Blake and Clarke Griffin of the Earth and Sky Clan left Lexa of the Woods Clan's tent late that night with permission to use the land surrounding the drop ship in exchange for assistance in the future against all enemy clans.

Neither of them mentioned that an enemy clan might some day be the Sky Clan. Neither of them knew how many strong they'd be by then. If it would be the pair of them, living in the drop ship like old hermits or if the rest of the one hundred would join them. They didn't know much. They only knew what they weren't.

They were not grounders.

They were not Sky People.

They were not friends.

They were not lovers.

They were demons on their own lead.


	2. Breathe Color

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A little Clarke and Raven healing.

Clarke heaved a great sigh as she pushed herself up from her knees to stand under the streaming sunlight of a cool spring morning that was threatening to turn warmer than it should. It had been several long weeks since they'd truly had a winter night, but it wasn't so far from the next that she'd forgotten how severe that time had been.

She brushed her hands together, trying to rid them of the soil that still clung between her fingers and underneath her nails. An Ag-worker, she was not, but in Earth and Sky, everyone did a bit of everything. It wasn't for lack of desire for other employment, especially for the light-eyed young woman.

Her back ached. Her knees ached. Her shoulders ached. Her head was starting to take on that heavy awareness that meant a dehydration headache wasn't too far off. All in all, Clarke felt better than she had in days.

Lexa had committed to their alliance with great fervor once she realized that Clarke and Bellamy weren't returning to Camp Jaha, not for good at least. It had been four days since Clarke had walked out Raven's Gate one final time, and in those four days, Lexa had shown her support in the silent way that all grounders seemed to have mastered.

The first day, there had been three men, all broad shouldered and fierce, there to help clear away the bodies of the dead. Those of the one hundred were buried alongside the rest while the grounders were taken for their own death rites. The removal of the dead had taken the entire day and all of Bellamy and Clarke's strength.

"Hey," a voice called, and Clarke pulled her mind from the past. She recognized the hesitant tone, and she glanced murderously down at the planted garden. It was late enough into the spring that a frost was near impossible, and Lexa had offered just enough to get them started. That had been Clarke's responsibility since the sun had risen.

Now, though, she had no task for her hands, no excuse for her time.

"Clarke, come on," the voice said again, and Clarke finally turned toward it. Raven stood there, arms crossed beneath her breasts, succeeding in both making herself smaller and looking annoyed at the same time. "We need to talk."

"You need to go rest, Raven," Clarke countered, eyes flickering behind her toward the drop ship. The mechanic had spent all of her time that morning getting anything up and running that she could, rigging the door and making small repairs.

"I'm half-crippled, not half-dead," Raven said sharply, dropping her arms and taking a step forward. "What are you going to do? Avoid me? Clarke, we have a village of twelve. Just talk to me and get it over with."

Raven was right about that, at least. A village of twelve, and no grounders to distract her with spears and arrows. Clarke did a mental head count. That first night, it had only been herself and Bellamy. Raven, Monty and Jasper had arrived the next morning, all smiles and eager laughter. Later that night, as dusk had fallen, Miller and Wick had come through the darkness, sheepish smiles in place and Miller's father trailing behind them. Raven had raged for a few moments but had calmed to the engineer's wit. Just that morning, Octavia and Lincoln had become permanent fixtures, no longer flickering back and forth between living on their own and checking in.

Just over Raven's shoulder, Clarke could see Miller and his father, diligently working on digging post holes. While there was peace with the Woods Clan, walls were a comfort, and the pair had taken it upon themselves two days ago when they'd risen. Now, nearly a quarter of their planned camp was wreathed in tall, tightly bound tree trunks and branches.

"Clarke!" Raven shouted, startling the blonde from her distraction.

"Yes," Clarke said finally, nodding to her. "Come on. We can talk in the drop ship." It would be abandoned at the moment, with Wick out with Bellamy and Lincoln, learning what could kill him and what he could kill. Octavia had taken Monty and Jasper to drag water up from a nearby stream. They were all traitors, really.

The drop ship had been cleaned out, gutted nearly, and everything had been put out in the sunlight until the ship could be made as clean as they could get it. Raven's blood had long ago been scrubbed away with river water, but still, Clarke had a hard time looking where the girl would have once lain.

"Bellamy said that it wasn't Finn that's bothering you," Raven said, straight and blunt as ever. At one time, Clarke had admired that quality. Now, she wished that it would disappear.

"No," Clarke said after a moment, turning to face the mechanic. They had eased themselves against opposite support beams, eight feet between them wider than eight feet had ever been. Raven accepted that and waited for more, but as Clarke tried to open her mouth, she found the words couldn't come. She had no explanation, not really.

"If you don't want to talk to me-"

"At first, it was Finn," Clarke said, cutting off the hurt tone with a soft, hushed voice. "It was his blood under my fingernails and his weight against my shoulder." She paused, tilting her head back enough so that she could stare hard at where Raven's support beam met the ceiling. "He thanked me, though. He knew, and he was afraid. I took that away."

"Then what is it?" Raven asked, pushing off of her pillar and coming to stand in front of Clarke, her crippled leg a half step behind her every time.

"The only thing I heard from the time he said thank-you until the grounders were leaving was you," Clarke said simply, still staring at the ceiling. "Your screaming, and every time I don't hear something else, even now, it's in my head."

Raven stood there, only a few paces in front of Clarke, and neither of them knew where to go from that statement.

"I don't blame you anymore," Raven said. The words felt like a settling point, like half an excuse and half forgiveness.

"You should," Clarke said. She still wouldn't meet Raven's eyes, and the pair of them stood there for a few long minutes. To Raven, standing there, lost on one leg and weighed down with a guilt she didn't know she could hobble away from, she thought maybe that might have been the end of things between them.

"No," Raven said at last. "No, I shouldn't. I should blame the grounders for their justice. Or Finn for killing those people to begin with. I put the shiv in your hand, Clarke, and at first, I did blame you. It took me longer than it should have to not anymore."

"It makes sense for you to blame me," Clarke said, at last her eyes dropped down to meet Raven's, and for a long moment, the dark haired young woman wondered if she'd have rather Clarke kept avoiding her gaze. It was a heavy thing, looking into those light eyes. Responsibility was heavy. Guilt was heavier. Both lay there, on the girl's shoulders, and for the first time, Raven realized that Clarke should have just still been a girl, too young to really have even chosen a career yet, at least one that she was serious about.

"No, it doesn't," Raven said after a long moment. "It makes sense for me to be angry and hurt and childish. It made sense for those things to happen for a few days, Clarke. I lost Finn a long time ago, and down here, I got to see a part of him that I never did on the Arc. He got to be a person that he'd never been allowed up there, and he had to pay for that freedom with his life, he would have more than readily."

"You don't have to-"

"I'm not trying to make you feel better. I'm trying to get you to understand that we have to move forward. You and I are alive. We're friends, Clarke; we're going to stay that way." Raven watched her for a few long moments, waiting for the weight to disappear from her shoulders, from the little lines around her eyes that shouldn't have been there yet, from the way she held herself.

Slowly, those shoulders sagged.

Quickly, the lines disappeared.

Steadily, she straightened her spine.

"There's our Rebel Princess," Raven said with a smile, and Clarke returned it with one of her own. "Bellamy will be happy."

"It's been killing him, hasn't it?" Clarke asked, pushing away from the pillar and stepping forward, letting Raven loop her arm with Clarke's own. The pair took a few steps toward the door of the drop ship, toward the bright sunshine of a spring afternoon.

"You should have seen him when I wouldn't let him out Raven's Gate to go find you that first night," Raven said.

"I'm glad you didn't," Clarke answered. "I needed a few days."

"You don't blame me for my reaction, and I won't blame you for yours," Raven offered. Clarke nodded absently, but for the first time in nearly two weeks, it was quiet in her mind. The bone deep screaming had gone, and in its place was a sweet silence filled only with the sound of the wind through the camp.

"Deal," Clarke said, breaking the silence. Raven's smile turned from happy to sly int he matter of a moment, and the dark haired girl broke from Clarke to disappear over to a bin they'd salvaged from the wreckage.

"I've got something for you," Raven said, holding out a small black canvass bag. Clarke's sharp eyes flickered over it without recognition. "It's from Abby."

"I don't want any-"

"Take it, Clarke. You trashed your art supply store." The words sunk in quickly, and a hot, licking flare of shame curled up from her stomach.

"I didn't...It seemed so childish, keeping those things for myself, and then, when I realized how ridiculous it was, I wanted it gone. I can't be the little girl drawing in her Sky Box cell, waiting to be floated. Not anymore."

"You haven't been that person in a year," Raven said, holding out the bag, forcing it into Clarke's hands. "Your mom said you'd want it, that she'd replaced what she could before they came down. She does love you, Clarke."

"Yeah," the blonde said easily, flipping the canvass flap open and pulling out an unfamiliar sketchbook and three black charcoal pencils. Before, on the Arc, Clarke had always preferred to draw in black. Everything was a muted grey in space. Now, on the ground, anytime she drew in black it seemed not worth the effort. "She loved who I was up there."

Raven watched Clarke stare at the dark tips of the pencils, confused for a few long minutes as the silence stretched on. Her mind reeled, trying to pick up on how the gift would have gone so wrong so quickly. In the bunker, there had been a well kept stash of bright colors and pastels, all lovingly kept safe until Clarke had shattered. Colors.

It hit the mechanic quickly.

They'd all changed on the ground, so fundamentally that who they were in the past was hardly recognizable in who they'd become. On the Arc, they'd all been a grey washed version of themselves. The ones that weren't ended up in the Sky Box. On the earth, they'd inhaled the colors of the world around them, and it had infused every aspect of their lives, changing them as completely as anything else they'd experienced in their lives.

"I like who you are down here," Raven said. Light eyes jumped from the tips of those pencils to her, and a slow smile spread over her lips.

"Yeah," Clarke murmured, gripping the pencils tighter in her hand before holding them out to Raven. "For you and Wick. You need something to work with for designs and calculations. I'll find something else."

Raven took them without complaint or question.


	3. Should I Not See

Lincoln sat down heavily at the base of a tall elm tree, staring up into the sunlight that came through the branches. With the wind, the patches of light danced and swayed, burning his retinas before flickering onward. Across from him, crouched in the soil, was Wick.

The engineer wasn't so terrible, really. He was a thinker, much like Raven, and Lincoln had learned to respect those qualities as well as the physical. As Wick struggled to get the knife through the belly of a stag, Lincoln couldn't help but wonder whether or not the man was cut out for living outside of Camp Jaha.

"No, you've got to let the blade work," Bellamy instructed, stealing the knife from Wick's hand and showing him once again how to put pressure on the edge without trying to bind it up and force through the flesh instead of cutting it. "See?"

"Not really," Wick said, voice heavy with something for a moment. "I know what you want; the doing it is different."

"Easier said than done," Lincoln agreed. He had to wonder at their lifestyle on the Arc. Some were thinkers, and they created elaborate thoughts in their minds and passed them through lips or into paper. Others, like Raven, had to take those thoughts and make them real. Lincoln was more comfortable with making his own thoughts into action than those of someone else, but this was the way of the Sky People. Wick was still very much of the Sky. The Earth had yet to infuse into his bones as it had the others.

"Come on," he finally interrupted the pair. Wick, he shouldered aside more roughly than needed, and Bellamy he let go on his own. Bellamy Blake was of the ground more than he was of the sky. There was a core to him, a core that all grounder men had, that was violent and wild and free. That core would let him live. That core was what Wick needed to find.

"I'll get it-"

"It will be dark soon. I don't want to be caught out here after sundown with a stag. There are creatures out here that would take the kill from us along with our lives."

"That's comforting," Bellamy muttered, forehead wrinkling. No doubt, he was thinking about the half-made wall that encircled the camp, about safety and sleeping under the stars instead of behind the metal of the drop ship. Lincoln doubted if they'd all be sleeping outside until that wall was built. A small clan was easier to protect, didn't need as much space, but it was harder to get the simple things accomplished. Lexa had already been as helpful as Lincoln could have imagined.

The innards of the animal spilled out onto the ground, and Wick made an uneasy sound in the back of his throat.

"Here," Bellamy offered, unwrapping a greased animal skin and rolling the mess onto it. They'd learned early that little could be wasted, and organs had nourishment as much as the rest of the animal. Lincoln was sure that Monty would have something green to throw into a stew pot to take away the harsh flavor.

The creature gutted and skinned, Lincoln tossed it across his shoulder, gesturing the pair onward. Bellamy held the sack of meat and his semi-auto, Wick, the skin and an uneasy stomach.

-RP: Demon on a Lead-

The stag fed them for three days, and during that time, no one else defected from Camp Jaha. It was almost a blessing, if anyone was asking Bellamy Blake. He'd rather a small group of useful people than fifty hands that were getting in his way more often than not. With their garden planted, the drop ship as cleaned out as it was going to be, and their supplies dispersed, everyone had spent most of their time on the wall.

A wall that was far more expansive than it had been the first time, with ladders built up ever few yards to a look out deck. It circled their entire camp, including the small fields, with three gates, one toward the front, one the back, and another that walked out to the cemetery. Eventually, they would ring that too in a shorter fence, something built more for piece of mind than safety or necessity.

As it was, the sun was starting to slide down into the horizon, lending the forest a faint, ghostly quality. Clarke had settled down beside him by the fire as the group ate. The buckskin was still stretched out and drying, and Bellamy couldn't help but wonder what they would make of it, what they would make of their lives.

Endless possibilities. Endless problems.

He wouldn't have it any other way, really. He might complain and wistfully remember the way the Arc-Fall Station was warmer or the ease of a space-ration pack over hunting, but that was for show. His sister's eyes met his through the fire. He supposed a lot of them did things for show anymore. She had been out most of the day with Indra, and the cut from her eyebrow to her jawline was likely to scar, even with the paste Clarke had pressed into it.

It was important to Octavia, so it was important to him.

It was easier to allow things like this, with peace no longer a distance wish. Sure, there were other clans, not far off and all scary as the Woods Clan, but they were outside of the territory that they had made for themselves, distant problems. Distant problems with distant solutions, so very unlike the cry that split the air a moment after.

"Hey!" The voice was familiar, too familiar, but Bellamy sighed and rose to his feet, waving Clarke and Jasper back to the ground. The semi-auto he left with them as he cracked the front gate open and peered out into the failing light.

"Murphy," Bellamy said with a nod.

"Bellamy," Murphy echoed. There was an anxiety to him, to the very way he held himself that spoke more of the morale inside Camp Jaha than it did about the young man.

"What do you want, Murphy?"

"Been busy. This is bigger than the camp used to be."

"Lexa gave us more land than we need," Bellamy answered. "She asked that we keep the walled in area as minimal as we might need for a clan, but we have free reign to the surrounding area, just like they do."

"Think you've got enough room for a few more people?" Murphy asked uneasily. His eyes flickered off into the growing darkness around them. Bellamy squinted into the night.

"Get whoever you've got and get inside," Bellamy said at last. "As long as they're from our group."

"Come on," Murphy hissed into the darkness, and four others appeared like smoke from the brush. Bellamy recognized Monroe and Harper, but the other two were unknown to him. He'd seen them around, but he'd not bothered with learning their names. Too young, really, to be much help. Old enough to rebel, it seemed.

They slipped past him into the camp. Monty recognized one of the unknown girls, and the other glued herself to Octavia's side as though they'd been friends for years. Bellamy waited a moment before turning to Murphy, who stood outside, big eyes flickering between the forest and the gate, as if unsure where he belonged.

"Come on, John," Bellamy said after a long silence. "We've got enough food to feed you all, and you know you're better off here than at Camp Jaha."

"No one in charge there ever tried to kill me," Murphy countered, but he was slipping past Bellamy and into camp in the same breath.

"You didn't try to hang any of them," Bellamy said as they walked toward the campfire. He hesitated a moment before clapping a hand heavily on Murphy's shoulder and moving to settle down by the fire. Murphy stood there a moment before seeming to cast off the gesture and sit down, taking an offered piece of venison from Octavia with a nod and a muttered thanks.

-RP: Demon on a Lead-

Wick wasn't really sure what he was doing. On the Arc, he had a job. He had tasks. He was trained for those tasks, and his mind was cut out to process them. Down here...

Down here, it seemed like every day was a new set of things to learn, to be unendingly bad at, and to only just get the hang of not embarrassing himself before the day ended.

"Today's humiliation is brought to you buy fishing," he murmured under his breath, using a bit of twine that Lincoln had given him and a crude hook with left over scraps from the stag to try and catch their next meal. If the amused looks Raven was given him was anything to go by, they'd all starve.

At least Monty seemed to be good at it. The guy wasn't good at much else other than tech, and Wick felt at home with him. Then he'd heard about the still. Then the kid's seemingly endless knowledge of plant life. Now he was apparently decent at fishing. Mind you, he had to pass them off to Murphy for gutting and cleaning, but the bug-eyed kid must have freaked the fish out as much as he unsettled Wick because not a nibble had hit his line all morning.

Wick wasn't doing much better. Between Monty, Lincoln and Bellamy, they'd be eating well for the night and the next few days. The smoke house had been finished yesterday, well away from anything else-Wick sensed a story there-and it looked like the rest wanted to smoke everything they could get their hands on.

With summer still getting hotter, it confused the engineer, but he didn't argue. If they wanted to store half of what they got their hands on and sit with stomachs that could still be stretched, he wasn't going to complain. At least out here, out of Camp Jaha, he had some other purpose. At least, out here, he was terrible at everything.

In the Arc, there was no challenge, nothing to eat up the little corners of his mind that whispered to him that he was wasting his time, that he was bored. He hadn't been bored since he'd followed Raven to Earth and Sky.

Something jerked the line in his hands, burning his palms for a moment before he got a better grip and shouted for Lincoln.

"Hey!" he shouted, gently pulling the line in as he'd been taught. If he broke one more roll of twine, their resident grounder might just feed him to the fish instead of feed him with fish. So, with care and many winces, he eased the line up, let it run when it was too tight and sang when plucked, and fought with the creature, much to the amusement of Raven, who sat in the sun beside him.

Clarke and Octavia were collecting grasses, kelp and herbs up river, but Raven had decided to stay behind with the rest, if only to watch as they struggled.

"Easy," Lincoln's voice cautioned as he pulled a touch too hard. "It will become tired before you do."

Surely enough, not half an hour later, Wick was holding up the biggest fish he'd ever seen-the biggest of the day by a few inches-and smiling even as blood dripped from his burned palms.

"What is this?" he asked, proud that he'd done something right for the first time all day. Lincoln considered the fish a moment before shaking his head.

"Salmon," he said, brow creased together. "It is too early for the spawning, though." For a moment, Wick thought maybe that was a bad thing, that he'd have to give his first real success back to the river. He almost did unwillingly as the thing flopped in his arms.

"Here," he offered, holding the creature out. Lincoln took it and it was delivered to Murphy who made a low whistling sound.

"You're hurt," Raven's voice startled him, and he turned away from his catch as it was slowly losing its innards onto a rock. The mechanic was in front of him, taking his hands and holding them this way and that in the sunlight. Annoyed with him, she tugged him toward the water, thrust his hands into the current, and rubbed.

The water stung, and her scrubbing wasn't gentle, but when she brought them back up, they were clear of fish scales and most of his blood. The wounds were precious little, just small burns and cuts where the twine had been pulled too tight, but their location and the number made it difficult for him to use his hands.

"You're done for the day," Raven said sternly, and before he could argue, she was stalwartly leading him off in the direction of Earth and Sky.

Their walk back was quiet. It didn't take long, as the river ran not even a half hour hike away from their camp, and Raven was determined to give him the silent treatment. He smiled at her back as she walked. It wasn't anything new. What was new was the concerned way she lead him to the drop ship, pushed him onto a chair, and wrapped his hands in seaweed and bandages.

"Just some cuts, Reyes," he said, drawing his hands away from her. She nodded but didn't move.

"You're so bad at all of this, you know that?" she asked, voice firm and clipped, laced with something that he couldn't identify.

"Yes, thanks for the reminder," he said, because what else could he say? He was terrible at everything that involved the ground.

"But you're getting better," she offered as she stood, groaning against the ache in her leg. It seemed to bother her on occasions, the leg, which was odd given that she wasn't supposed to have any feeling until mid thigh.

"He is teachable, folks," he joked, standing and flexing his hands to test them.

"Trainable, maybe," Reyes countered before she ducked out of the ship. He stayed there for a few long minutes, just staring around him. This was where the bulk of the one hundred had lived at first, where they had fallen from the Arc. It was a miracle, really, that as many survived as they had. Most were still hiding behind the tall walls and comforts of Camp Jaha, but each day one or two more either defected or could be seen through the woods before they disappeared again, testing the waters.

Outside, he could hear the fishing party as they started up a fire in the smokehouse. Wick ducked out of the ship and joined them, talking and laughing as they tried to find the best way to add the fish to the other small game that had been cut into strips and strung up to dry.

"What's this for, anyway?" he asked, confused at their incessant need to hoard.

"Winter," Clarke said simply. She and Octavia had joined them at the river, their rucksacks filled to bursting with herbs and plants and seaweed. Clarke had a rack in the smokehouse she devoted just to drying out the vegetation that she collected.

"Winter?" Wick asked, but he knew the term. Of course he knew the term. There were seasons on the ground. He'd taken basic climatology like the rest of them, but what he didn't understand was why a little frozen precipitation and some chilly nights turned them all into squirrels, packing away their finds.

"The top of the river freezes," Bellamy offered, understanding his confusion. "It's hard to get through to fish, and when you can get through, you're too cold to stay there long enough and the fish don't bite. Most of the game hibernates. You can find squirrel nests, up in the trees, but you can't get to them safely. All of the vegetation dies. We almost starved last winter."

He hadn't thought of it that way, and as Lincoln reverently laid the fish out over small racks that they'd made, he understood. Monty came along behind him, pressing little sprigs of plant into the flesh. He had a smile on his face with each one, sticking some of the little leaves off of the stems down into the flesh.

"Dibs," he said, gesturing around toward the ones that he had infested with the small bits of vegetation.

"No way, man," Jasper countered. "I found that bush and you're not-"

"It's not a bush it's-"

"Both of you calm down," Clarke chided. "There's a long time until winter, and I took a cutting. There's room left int he garden, and I'll make sure to dry some out for through the winter." The news brought a great whoop of joy from both young men, who, in their excitement, fled from the smokehouse, chasing something that only the pair of them knew.

-RP: Demon on a Lead-

The campfire popped and crackled. It had long ago gone past a simple campfire though. Bonfire, Bellamy thought that he'd hard the grounders call it. It marked special times.

Tonight was no different. Lexa united the clans, but with her favor only came the favor of the Woods Clan. Just because she lead them into peace didn't mean that peace would remain, and tonight was the first of many attempts toward furthering the status quo.

Clarke and Lexa sat beside the fire, and Bellamy couldn't help but be uncomfortable. There was another woman, of a clan that Lincoln explained was closely allied with Lexa's. She was a strong woman, with broad shoulders and a calm but unpredictable disposition. Her name was Luna, and Lexa had made arrangements for Clarke to meet her. It was a good opportunity, but it still made Bellamy's skin crawl.

Clarke took to the grounders like second nature, and it made her second—because Bellamy had heard himself referred to in that manner so often he was starting to believe it—itchy. Most things made him itchy now a-days though. He had people to protect again. It was nice, for a while, letting Marcus Kane and Abby Griffin and Thelonious Jaha take control and lead and be the ones responsible. It wasn't him though, and despite all his bitching, he preferred the faint tickle of trouble at the back of his tongue.

Besides, he supposed as he looked around at his people mingling hesitantly with the small escort of grounders and each other, it wasn't such a bad feeling, that itch.

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know your thoughts.


End file.
